[ih] question re. early adoption of email

Miles Fidelman mfidelman at meetinghouse.net
Tue Apr 26 22:32:22 PDT 2016


Thanks Vint!

Actually, since posting, a few BBN folks gave me some additional history 
(Bob Clements and Ken Pogran in particular).  I hadn't realized that the 
NIC had paper-based mailing lists going for early RFCs and such - that's 
how the word got out (software by ftp).

Miles

On 4/26/16 10:28 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
> dave crocker and john vittal can help here I imagine.
>
> v
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 4:11 PM, Miles Fidelman 
> <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Folks,
>
>     Maybe a silly question, but....
>
>     I remember arriving at MIT in the Fall of 1971, immediately getting an
>     account on the AI lab ITS system, and a month or so later, Ray
>     Tomlinson
>     sent the first ARPANET email.
>
>     Pretty quickly, a mail program showed up, and within a few months,
>     email
>     was flowing all around the ARPANET.
>
>     But, I'm wondering about the play-by-play from Ray sending mail
>     between
>     two adjacent machines at BBN, to mail being available on the early
>     batch
>     of Internet hosts.
>
>     For those running TENEX, I assume they ftp'd Ray's code (or was it
>     some
>     precursor to ftp?).  But.... how did people actually find out
>     about the
>     code - after all, there weren't any email lists to announce it on.
>
>     And, for those not running TENEX - how did folks find out enough
>     details
>     to code up mailers and clients for other machines, and then get
>     the word
>     out?
>
>     Anybody remember the play-by-play?
>
>     Thanks,
>
>     Miles Fidelman
>
>     --
>     In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>     In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
>
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>
>
>
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-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

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